


Glad You Came

by Solarcat



Series: My Universe Will Never Be the Same [2]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Arizona Coyotes | Phoenix Coyotes, Fluff, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-18 07:12:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3560825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solarcat/pseuds/Solarcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mikkel wasn’t born with his words, like some people are. They filled in over the summer when he was about a year and a half old, or so his parents and Mads tell him, curving across his hip in dark lines.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glad You Came

Mikkel wasn’t born with his words, like some people are. They filled in over the summer when he was about a year and a half old, or so his parents and Mads tell him, curving across his hip in dark lines. He was too young to really notice or care, at that point, more preoccupied with toys and following Mads around like a shadow. 

When he starts to learn to read, he tries to read his words, but they’re funny and strange. Eventually he asks his mother, and she tells him. _Oh, it’s Danish_ , his words read, but in Swedish, which is what the people over the bridge speak. He wrinkles his nose at that, and his mother laughs indulgently and musses his hair and sends him outside to play with Mads for a while before dinner.

“Are your words in Swedish?” he asks Mads, who’s practicing football in the backyard and has managed to get grass stains all over his new pants; their mom’s gonna be so mad at him when he goes inside. Mads shakes his head and passes Mikkel the ball, even though he’s a lot smaller and he can’t juggle it the way Mads can. He waits to kick it back until Mads answers.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Mads says, and Mikkel frowns, because that’s not an answer at all, but Mads won’t say anything else.

~*~

Mikkel picks hockey over everything else. Mads made the same choice before him, but Mikkel knows he doesn’t have to follow his brother all the time. He chooses hockey because he loves everything about it, down to the smell of the fresh ice in the rink. He doesn’t pick hockey because of his words, but when Frölunda HC contacts him about playing for them — for their Juniors team, of course, but with the possibility of playing in the Swedish Elite League eventually, he can’t say that his words have nothing to do with his choice to say yes.

It’s not actually that far away, in the grand scheme of things. Mikkel wants to play in the NHL someday, and that’s so much further away from home and his parents and his brother that it’s bewildering to think about. Compared to playing in North America, playing in Sweden is hardly any distance at all, but he’s still just fifteen and going to be entirely on his own. Well, he thinks he’s going to be living with some guys from the team, maybe? It’s an apartment, though, not a house where his mom is there to make dinner and do his laundry. And his Swedish isn’t that great, honestly, though he made a good effort to learn it, considering his soulmate is — probably, more than likely — Swedish. 

Mads hugs him for a solid five minutes when they have to leave after dropping him off, and if Mads’ shoulder comes away a little bit wet, well. They’re brothers; they keep each others’ secrets.

(Mikkel knows what Mads’ words say, now, and he won’t tell a soul.)

~*~

Frölunda is good to Mikkel. The team is amazing, and his Swedish improves by leaps and bounds, even though he never actually manages to meet anyone who says his words. There’s plenty of, _Oh, you’re Danish!_ , but that’s different, it doesn’t match his words and everyone knows that your soulmate’s first words to you will be a perfect match, down to the letter.

He tries not to be discouraged by it; after all, lots of people don’t find their soulmates until they’re a lot older than sixteen. He can’t help _wanting_ , though, and hormones are only a part of the problem. The other part is that when he goes out with his teammates they spend the time flirting with girls, and Mikkel has a feeling that’s not going to help him find his soulmate, given that the fantasies he lets himself indulge in when he gets enough privacy to jerk off involve a lot more dick than they would if he were entirely straight.

In fact, by the time he’s drafted to the Kitchener Rangers, he’s pretty sure his switch is set to “not actually straight at all.” He still goes out with his teammates, and talks to girls they introduce him to, who giggle and smile at his accented and sometimes-faltering English, and who sometimes look at him with a glint in their eyes, like they’ve figured out why he isn’t trying harder to pick them up, but don’t mind. Once he goes home with one of those girls, who lets him sleep on her couch and in the morning makes enough coffee for two, before driving him back to his billet and sending him on his way with a kiss on the cheek. (He flushed bright red at practice, when the guys started whistling and hooting when he walked into the room, but not for the reason they think.) 

None of the girls in Canada speak Swedish to him at all, and he doesn’t mind that, since his daydreams are still full of distinctly male bodies. There are Swedes in the NHL, he reminds himself whenever he catches himself staring at his words in the mirror too long, or rubbing his fingertips over them languidly in the afterglow of a good orgasm, imagining it’s someone else’s come splashed across his belly instead of his own. 

The Rangers don’t win the Memorial Cup, but Mikkel makes it to the NHL anyway; he tugs the Phoenix jersey over his head in the first round of the draft, and wonders if there are any Swedes in Arizona.

(As it turns out, there are two, but they’re both quite a bit older than Mikkel, and neither one is _his_.)

~*~

NHL hockey is a whole different world; the competition is intense, and Mikkel spends his entire first year feeling tired and hungry (always hungry, he’s never been so hungry in his entire life, and it doesn’t help that the veterans smile and laugh indulgently when he goes back for seconds and thirds, most meals). He makes friends on the team, spends his off-days golfing and playing Wii Sports with Kyle and working out even when his muscles scream at him afterwards. He doesn’t meet his soulmate, his first year in the NHL. 

His second year, he spends a good chunk of time with the AHL in San Antonio, and he doesn’t meet his soulmate there, either. To be fair, he doesn’t exactly try. Mikkel’s not overly familiar with the U.S. — giving up his last year of high school for hockey is something he’s not sure whether he’s proud of, just yet. (If he makes it in the NHL, then he doesn’t have any regrets. Being down in the AHL is enough to make him concerned about it, but the coaches keep saying it’s temporary; they want him to develop, he’ll be back in the NHL soon. He grits his teeth and works even harder than he had his first year.) The point is, he doesn’t know much about the U.S., and maybe that last year wouldn’t have helped him in that particular regard, but he understands almost immediately that Texas isn’t a place where he wants to be too obvious about looking at men.

Mikkel keeps his head down, and plays hard, and tries not to think about his words or his mysterious soulmate. 

~*~

Oliver Ekman-Larsson arrives as the second shift of camp is getting started, fresh off the plane but they want him on the ice right away. Mikkel only knows this because the coaches told him; he speaks Swedish and Oliver is Swedish and Mikkel has already ruthlessly crushed the tiny, hopeful part of him that started to wonder if _maybe_ … There’s nothing about his words that even indicates his soulmate is a hockey player; Mikkel has a much better chance of meeting them over the summer at home than he does of meeting them at training camp in Arizona, anyway. 

It doesn’t take long for Ekman-Larsson to suit up, and Mikkel ends up having to break off from a drill they’ve got going (with an approving nod from the coaches) to meet him at the edge of the rink. The latch can be tricky, if you’re not used to it, and Mikkel opens it with the butt of his stick the way most of the guys do, making a quick assessment of their new rookie as he goes. Ekman-Larsson looks tired and a touch nervous, but there’s a brightness in his eyes that Mikkel likes already.

“Hey, welcome to the team,” Mikkel says, his Swedish a bit halting after a summer of Danish and the quick transition back to Doaner’s English-only room. He thinks he got it mostly-right, anyway; he remembered to use the Swedish for “team,” not the Danish, and that’s probably the most important thing. He smiles as warmly as he knows how, just to make up for any mistakes, but Ekman-Larsson is staring at him slack-jawed, his lips curved in a soft “o” of surprise, and Mikkel’s stomach swoops terrifyingly at that, because somehow he’d missed that Ekman-Larsson is _pretty_.

Mikkel nearly misses what Ekman-Larsson says, because he’s distracted by the shape of his mouth and because his voice is relatively quiet, in the echoing space of the rink.

“Oh,” Ekman-Larsson says, his eyes wide with shock and something akin to wonder, “It’s _Danish_.” 

Mikkel’s jaw drops so fast his mouthguard nearly falls out, but Ekman-Larsson doesn’t seem to care that Mikkel looks like an idiot as he shoves it back in. He’s looking at Mikkel like he hung the moon, and right then, Mikkel feels like he could, if his soulmate asked him to.

~*~

“Taking Olie out” after practice ends up being kind of a misnomer, because both of them are shuffled along with the rest of the team, who all head out to a restaurant Mikkel sincerely hopes has been warned in advance. Luckily, no one seems to notice or care that Oliver sticks tight to Mikkel the whole time, probably chalking it up to Olie’s lack of English. (Honestly, Olie’s English isn’t as bad as all that, from what Mikkel can tell, but he remembers his first months in Sweden, and then his first months in Canada, and he isn’t going to be the one to force Olie out of his shell if he wants to stay there for a little while.)

In the end, though, it doesn’t matter that what possibly counts as their first date is actually a boistrous post-training-camp meal with half their team, because it turns out that the team is putting both of them up in the same hotel for camp. The team is, in fact, putting them up in the same _room_ for camp, and they share a secret, amused look as Jarrett explains. Oliver bites his lip trying not to laugh as Mikkel assures him that it’s fine, it’s more than fine, he’s happy to help Oliver get comfortable with the team.

Mikkel finds himself backed against the hotel room door as soon as it clicks shut on Jarrett’s admonitions to not be late for breakfast in the morning, and to call if they need anything. 

Olie’s lips are soft and a bit chapped from his long hours of travel and the time on the ice, and the kiss is a little bit awkward, because Mikkel isn’t used to tilting his face up, and because neither of them can stop smiling long enough to make it really good. 

It’s perfect anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> There was supposed to be porn in this, but the fluff overwhelmed my poor brain. So there might be more fluffy soulmates fic in the future, hopefully _with_ porn.  >.>


End file.
